My view of Computer Communication Review, 1969–1976

David Walden [email protected]

This article is an editorial note submitted to CCR. It has NOT been peer reviewed. The author takes full responsibility for this article’s technical content. Comments can be posted through CCR Online.

ABSTRACT and Ethernet was running in a Xerox laboratory [7]. Distributed Brief notes relating to the Computer Communication Review in computation and operating systems were being investigated [5]; a 1975–1976. variety of networked email clients were being tried out [8]. National governments were experimenting with their own packet networks CCS CONCEPTS [2]. New kinds of communication carriers such as Telenet 1 were starting up. The phone companies were fighting back against new • General and reference; forms of computer communications, computer vendors were push- ing their proprietary network architectures, and other companies KEYWORDS were pushing packet-based networking for commercial clients. I History, ACM SIGCOMM was in the thick of lots of this which provided opportunities for collecting material for CCR. 1 INTRODUCTION During 1975–76 CCR served (as it had since its inception) as a It is too big a coincidence not to note—that 2019 is the 50th anniver- newsletter for all of SIGCOMM with announcements of SIGCOMM sary of both SIGCOMM and the installation of the ARPANET’s activities, SIGCOMM meeting reports, the SIG’s financial statement, original four sites. I don’t claim to see cause and effect. I do claim announcements of non-SIG events in the computer communication that the time was ripe in 1969 for a revolution in computer commu- area, and announcements from other parts of the ACM. There was nication and for a new SIG and a new journal. a mix of European and North American authors of technical papers In its early years, Computer Communication Review (CCR) issues and one paper from Japan. Several different network development were sometimes irregular and not so thick and that bothered me. efforts were described. One issue (volume 6, number 1, January 1976) By 1975 I had already gotten to know a lot of people in my part of was focused on hardware. Some of the papers were published to the computer communication world (I was an original member of give wider distribution to interesting notes from various working Bolt Beranek and Newman’s development team for the ARPANET groups, such as IFIP Working Group 6.1 and a couple of ARPA packet switch). I felt I might contribute to CRR. I asked chair Wes sponsored study efforts. Two examples are: Chu if there was anything I could do to help. My theory of a journal • Lawrence Roberts 1975 CCR paper “ALOHA packet system to which people would want to make submissions had two parts: with and without slots and capture” [10] had previously (1) issues must come out on a regular schedule; (2) the editor has been circulated as ARPA Satellite System Note 8 on June to solicit high quality content if it is not arriving voluntarily. Wes 26, 1972; it deserved much wider circulation which it got agreed and arranged for me to me to become CCR co-editor with through CCR, and I suspect it is still referenced and cited the then editor Walter Bond (who was serving as Treasurer as well today. It was preserved by publication in CCR. I don’t know if as Editor, perhaps indicating that he was doing the editor’s job the ARPANET Satellite System note collection has survived because no one else had volunteered). For the first couple of issues anywhere. Walter last listed as “Editor (Communications)” and I was listed • V. Cerf, A. McKenzie, R. Scantlebury, and H. Zimmerman’s as “Editor (Networks)”; Wes’s announcement of my involvement 1976 CCR paper “Proposal for an international end to end justified adding me because of SIGCOMM’s “recent emphasis in protocol” [3] was an effort by people out of the ARPANET, computer network activities”. Seven of the eight papers in those Cyclades, and U.K. National Physical Laboratory networking first two issues related to networks. At that point, Walter turned the efforts to put forth a “consensus position on a ‘datagram’ editorship fully over to me. Craig Partridge has described this in his protocol”. CCR’s goal was to give the document distribution “An Informal History of ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication beyond IFIP Working Group 6.1. In time the paper became Review 1970–2012” [9]. During my editorship, the issues weren’t widely available beyond CCR. always long; they were always on time. There were still a few papers on more traditional communica- Lots was already changing in the computer communications tions topics, but networks were the hot area at the time. The two world by 1975–76. The ARPANET was expanding and being im- papers listed in the example CCR cover on the next page describe proved and host computers had learned to talk to each other [11]. the Experimental Packet Switched Service that being developed by R&D presentation and publication opportunities were everywhere the United Kingdom Post Office2 [ ] and the multi-national European for both researchers and implementors, with international sharing of new ideas and some hopes for compatibility. Shared channel packet switching was emerging using satellites [4] and radios [6] 1See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telenet

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20 issues certainly would have looked more professionally published if we had the resources to convert the text of author’s papers to the RUNOFF, troff or Pub digital desktop publishing tools that already existed in 1975. The Proceeding of the 1975 SIGCOMM/SIGOPS Interprocess Communications Workshop was effectively an additional 1975 pub- lication of CCR, as it went to all SIGCOMM members and that quarter’s CCR was allowed to be short. There previously had been a preliminary announcement in the third CCR issue of 1974 and then an official looking announce- ment in the fourth issue of 1974. The workshop was held March 24–25, 1975, in Santa Monica, California. Wes Chu was chair for the workshop. Wes as well as , T.C. Chen, R. Stockton Gains, and Butler Lampson were session chairs. A 230 page vol- ume of “Preprints of Working Papers” was given out; there are 34 working-paper titles in the table of contents. According to Wes’s post workshop note in CCR, about 45 working papers had been received and attendance was capped at 50. After the workshop, a 101 page proceedings was compiled and published containing 16 papers and listing titles of 26 “working papers not included in the proceedings”. As I remember, I used the same paste-up-pages-type- page-numbers-and-mail-to-ACM” technique for the proceedings that I used for issues of CCR. As of the end of 1976, I turned the editorship of CCR over to Alex McKenzie, feeling that CCR had become a better journal. REFERENCES [1] D. Barber. 1975. Cost project 11: a European informatics network. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 5, 3 (1975), 12–15. Informatics Network that was being developed by the European [2] C. Broomfield. 1975. Packet switching: the experimental packet switched service. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 5, 3 (1975), 2–11. Economic Community [1]. [3] V. Cerf, A. McKenzie, R. Scantlebury, and H. Zimmermann. 1976. Proposal for an In addition to soliciting submission of papers, as CCR editor international end to end protocol. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 6, 1 (1976), 63–89. I also wrote sometimes lengthy editor’s notes providing context [4] Irwin Jacobs, Lin-Nan Lee, Andrew Viterbi, Richard Binder, Robert Bressler, Nai- for the papers and where they came from and giving news and Ting Hsu, and Robert Weissler. 1977. Cpoda-a demand assignment protocol for announcements. I also had another job. I used a primitive (but satnet. In Proceedings of the fifth symposium on Data communications. ACM, 2–5. [5] P. Johnson, R. Schantz, and R. Thomas. 1975. Interprocess Communication then typical) form of “desktop publishing”. I typed page numbers to Support Distributed Computing. In SIGCOMM-SIGOPS Interface Meeting on on blank pages using a Selectric typewriter and pasted the actual Interprocess Communications. Santa Monica, CA. papers as they came from authors on successive pages. I am sure [6] and Fouad Tobagi. 1975. Packet switching in radio channels: Part I-carrier sense multiple-access modes and their throughput-delay character- there was some work with an exacto knife or paper cutter as well. istics. IEEE transactions on Communications 23, 12 (1975), 1400–1416. I assume I also typed the table of contents and issue date, etc., [7] and David Boggs. 1976. Ethernet: Distributed packet switching for local computer networks. Commun. ACM 19, 7 (1976), 395–404. information and somehow provided it to the ACM for CCR’s front [8] Craig Partridge. 2008. The technical development of email. IEEE Annals cover. (I don’t remember having any say about cover style.) I sent of the History of Computing 30, 2 (2008), 3–29. the package of numbered CCR pages to the ACM for printing and [9] Craig Partridge. 2013. An informal history of ACM SIGCOMM computer com- munication review 1970-2012. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review distribution. 43, 2 (2013), 72–73. I notice some of my editor’s notes were apparently done with [10] Lawrence G. Roberts. 1975. ALOHA packet system with and without slots and RUNOFF, the early text formatting program from MIT, a version of capture. ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review 5, 2 (1975), 28–42. [11] David C. Walden. 1975. Experiences in building, operating and using the ARPA which was running on the PDP-10 TENEX system I used. The CCR Network. In Second USA-Japan Computer Conference, Tokyo.

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